• Thanks for visiting the Kaleidescape Owners' Forum

    This forum is for the community of Kaleidescape owners, and others interested in learning about the system, equipment, services, and the company itself.

    It is run by a group of enthusiastic Kaleidescape owners and dealers purely as a service to this community.

    This board is not affiliated in any way with Kaleidescape, Inc.
    For official technical support, product information, or customer service, please visit www.kaleidescape.com

  • You are currently in "Guest" mode and not logged in with a registered account.

    The forum is free to use and most of the forum can be used by guests who are not registered....

    ... but we strongly encourage you to register for a full account. There is no cost to register for a full account.

    Benefits of registering for a full account:

    • Participate in the discussions! You must have a registered account to make posts on the forums. You will be able to start your own thread on a topic or question, or you can reply to other threads/discussions.
    • Use the "Conversation" feature (known as "private messaging" on other forums) to communicate directly with any of the other users here.
    • Access the Files area. The "resources" area of the forum contains many "Favorite Scene" and Script files that can dramatically increase the enjoyment of your Kaleidescape system. Go directly to great scenes in your favorite movies, created by other owners, and add automation to playback of your system with Scripts.
    • You won't see this annoying notice at the top of every screen!😊

    It's easy and free to register for the forum. Just click the "Register" button in the upper right corner of this page, and follow the instructions there.

CEDIA 2022 Hopes & Dreams

TrackZ

Well-known member
CEDIA is around the corner now (about a month away) and represents the right place and time for interesting Kaleidescape news to release. What are your hopes for CEDIA from K in terms of announcements?

I'm hoping we see some real major advancements in software and UI features. I would do cartwheels for Movies Anywhere integration.

I'm not sure that I need to see any new hardware this year. A Dolby Vision or HDMI 2.1 Strato wouldn't do much of anything for me. I also don't expect there are any additional partnerships that would appeal to me, and I very much hope we see a lot more than just more purchase collaborations.
 
I'd like to see the 1.85:1 indicator broken out to display the ACTUAL aspect ratio instead of being a catchall for everything between 2.40 and 1.78.
 
Possibly larger Terra servers. 20TB drives have been around for a while to test their reliability. 22 TB drives are now available also. There can be 80 TB or 88 TB Terra servers.
 
It is probably a pipe dream at this point, but Movies Anywhere integration would also make me do cartwheels. It is annoying to not be able to take my library with me wherever I go like I can with every other digital library I own/subscribe to.

Andy


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
For what it's worth, not commenting on anything that will or will not be at CEDIA, our existing aspect ratio code handles any aspect ratio if you factor in the "trim" values that are emitted as part of the aspect ratio events. It was designed to work with systems like the Director's Choice screens from Stewart Filmscreen, that are 4-way masking and infinitely adjustable. But since there are systems that only have a fixed number of presets, we also have the fixed list of presets that are sometimes not exact matches. Unfortunately there are a few aspect ratios that arguably really should be among the presets but aren't (2.20, 2.00, 2.76).

What is really not handled is movies like Dark Knight, Aquaman, Hunger Games: Catching Fire, and most recently, Top Gun: Maverick, where the aspect ratio changes within the film, sometimes so rapidly that no physical masking system could possibly adapt.

Anyway, just wanted to at least explain a bit better the current state of affairs.
 
For what it's worth, not commenting on anything that will or will not be at CEDIA, our existing aspect ratio code handles any aspect ratio if you factor in the "trim" values that are emitted as part of the aspect ratio events. It was designed to work with systems like the Director's Choice screens from Stewart Filmscreen, that are 4-way masking and infinitely adjustable. But since there are systems that only have a fixed number of presets, we also have the fixed list of presets that are sometimes not exact matches. Unfortunately there are a few aspect ratios that arguably really should be among the presets but aren't (2.20, 2.00, 2.76).

What is really not handled is movies like Dark Knight, Aquaman, Hunger Games: Catching Fire, and most recently, Top Gun: Maverick, where the aspect ratio changes within the film, sometimes so rapidly that no physical masking system could possibly adapt.

Anyway, just wanted to at least explain a bit better the current state of affairs.
Thanks for this extra info.

My situation is that I'm using my projector's lens memory and a motorized masking screen, but no control system to automate it (yet). Ideally, when we go through the app, the website, or even the on-screen layout, it would display the actual aspect ratio there so I can pull up the correct lens memory preset and close the masking accordingly before I hit play.

Nothing annoys the family more than when I have to pause it quick 90 seconds into a movie because the masking & framing aren't matching the aspect ratio of the film.

This was actually a feature I was really looking forward to with the Kaleidescape, as PLEX shows everything as 16:9, because it only looks at the aspect ratio of the file, and all disc rips are 16:9 with black bars burned into them when needed.

If that field that is displaying for the store and UI is really only there to tell the viewer what the aspect ratio is, I'd love that to be accurate.
 
Thanks very much for the extra information about your use case. I completely agree that the store should show the correct aspect ratio, and honestly, I think we have all the information we need in our existing bookmarks to compute it and display it.

The challenge is going to be with these movies that switch between ratios. For folks with 1.78 screens, masking to the tallest ratio is what they're going to want, so that will fit well with our bookmarks. For folks with 2.40 screens, it's tough because some films work well cropped to 2.40 and others don't.
 
Thanks very much for the extra information about your use case. I completely agree that the store should show the correct aspect ratio, and honestly, I think we have all the information we need in our existing bookmarks to compute it and display it.

The challenge is going to be with these movies that switch between ratios. For folks with 1.78 screens, masking to the tallest ratio is what they're going to want, so that will fit well with our bookmarks. For folks with 2.40 screens, it's tough because some films work well cropped to 2.40 and others don't.
Perhaps there's a way to designate a new tag such as 1.85VAR that sends the same signals to any control systems as a 1.85 title would? The VAR would also tell folks like me, with a 2.40 screen, to set it up for 2.40 and turn the 135t/b mask on my projector. :cool:
 
Short list of wishes
- software tweak to allow either a single purpose small Strato or section of a larger unit to be dedicated to pre-loading premium rentals for instant playback
- still waiting for the studios to allow day-date new release rentals .... same as above re: instant playback
 
Out of curiosity, Thrillcat, what aspect ratios do you have your screen set up to support?

Also, I haven't seen Top Gun: Maverick yet (I know, I know, I've been waiting to put together a movie night with friends...). When you watched it, did you crop it to 2.40? Did anything important get noticeably cut off?
 
Out of curiosity, Thrillcat, what aspect ratios do you have your screen set up to support?

Also, I haven't seen Top Gun: Maverick yet (I know, I know, I've been waiting to put together a movie night with friends...). When you watched it, did you crop it to 2.40? Did anything important get noticeably cut off?
My screen is native 2.40, and there’s a 16:9 hard stop. Anything between that is stopping the motors manually, which is actually really easy to do with the included remote (124” SeymourAV Proscenium Screen). The projector is set up for 2.4, 2.2, 2.0, 1.85, and 16:9. I set the projector first and use the edges of the projected image to stop the masking. Works well.

As for Maverick, yes, I set up for 2.40 and added a mask in the JVC menu to black out the top & bottom down to 2.4 so I wouldn’t even know when those scenes came up. I’ve watched it twice so far, both times setup this way, and I don’t feel that I’ve missed anything at all.

Planes are wider than they are tall. 😉
 
Thanks for that. I need to do a little digging on our end to understand a disparity. If I look at 2001 on the movie store, we clearly list the aspect ratio as 2.20 (which is correct). But we don’t have a 2.20 preset in our standard set of aspect ratio presets. So I’m not sure why that shows up on the movie’s details if it’s not one of our presets. It does show up, though, so I think that just leaves 2.0 that we don’t currently show from among your list of projector presets.

Plus of course the oddballs like Maverick where we will show 1.85 but you will want to do something different.
 
For what it's worth, not commenting on anything that will or will not be at CEDIA, our existing aspect ratio code handles any aspect ratio if you factor in the "trim" values that are emitted as part of the aspect ratio events. It was designed to work with systems like the Director's Choice screens from Stewart Filmscreen, that are 4-way masking and infinitely adjustable. But since there are systems that only have a fixed number of presets, we also have the fixed list of presets that are sometimes not exact matches. Unfortunately there are a few aspect ratios that arguably really should be among the presets but aren't (2.20, 2.00, 2.76).

What is really not handled is movies like Dark Knight, Aquaman, Hunger Games: Catching Fire, and most recently, Top Gun: Maverick, where the aspect ratio changes within the film, sometimes so rapidly that no physical masking system could possibly adapt.

Anyway, just wanted to at least explain a bit better the current state of affairs.
I hadn't realized that Top Gun: Maverick had changing aspect ratios. I always ran into this problem with the HD version of The Dark Knight, but that was "fixed" with the HDR/UHD versions, since those had a fixed 2.40 aspect ratio. This is the first HDR/UHD movie that I've seen in the K store that has changing aspect ratios.

I think I brought this up before, but it would be really helpful if the aspect ratio metadata could be edited through the web browser. For folks with a scope screen, we could optionally edit that data through the web interface, so that the taller scenes are cropped to 2.40 instead of having large portions of the movie "window boxed".
 
Thanks for that. I need to do a little digging on our end to understand a disparity. If I look at 2001 on the movie store, we clearly list the aspect ratio as 2.20 (which is correct). But we don’t have a 2.20 preset in our standard set of aspect ratio presets. So I’m not sure why that shows up on the movie’s details if it’s not one of our presets. It does show up, though, so I think that just leaves 2.0 that we don’t currently show from among your list of projector presets.

Plus of course the oddballs like Maverick where we will show 1.85 but you will want to do something different.

An great place to start is the various Jurassic Park titles. There are at least a couple that show incorrect aspect ratios, and I've even been led to believe that there is a range between 1.85 and 2.20 that all display 1.85 due to your masking system/control system integrations, perhaps that's not actually the case?
 
Hmmm. I haven't seen all of the more recent Jurassic Park titles. I'll have to look more deeply into that. Are they using 2.0?

I would expect anything in the range of 1.85 to 2.20 to be called 1.85. Honestly, I would have expected everything between 1.85 and 2.35 to be called 1.85, but apparently I'm wrong about that.

The reason is that for systems that have 1.78 screens with top & bottom masks, and that only support preset ratios, we want to have the masks closed as much as possible without obscuring any content. So, the closest "more open" preset ratio is used when bookmarking the title, and then trim values are applied so that systems that do support trim can achieve that correct intermediate ratio.
 
Hmmm. I haven't seen all of the more recent Jurassic Park titles. I'll have to look more deeply into that. Are they using 2.0?

I would expect anything in the range of 1.85 to 2.20 to be called 1.85. Honestly, I would have expected everything between 1.85 and 2.35 to be called 1.85, but apparently I'm wrong about that.

The reason is that for systems that have 1.78 screens with top & bottom masks, and that only support preset ratios, we want to have the masks closed as much as possible without obscuring any content. So, the closest "more open" preset ratio is used when bookmarking the title, and then trim values are applied so that systems that do support trim can achieve that correct intermediate ratio.
Jurassic World and Jurassic Park: Dominion both display 1.85, but the movies are actually in 2.0.

I keep getting more and more confused, and maybe it's because of things others have stated in the past. Is the data that displays in the store and on the UI the same data that is talking to control/masking systems, or are there two different data sets? I understand not wanting to confuse the control systems, but if there are two sets, it would be possible to set the display to the actual ratio and the control data to the 'rounded' setting. Or, if there's one, could there be a line of code implemented that simply gives the 1.85 command to any of those 'in-between' ratios?

Either way, it seems like there is definitely a solution to be had - even if it's allowing the user to edit the aspect ratio field to meet their needs, as @baltz mentioned?
 
Back
Top